Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
A lawsuit filed by a former Village of Lincolnwood firefighter against the village and the private company that employed him will be allowed to continue, but the count filed against the village has been dropped, a federal district court judge wrote on Wednesday.
Joshua Weller alleged in the lawsuit that while he worked as a firefighter/paramedic in Lincolnwood for Paramedic Services of Illinois Inc. (PSI), he saw widespread discrimination against a female coworker.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division on Aug. 30, 2017 by Weller’s attorney, Daniel Zemans.
But the defendants, which include PSI, the village of Lincolnwood and “Jane and John Does 1-10,” filed a motion seeking to have the suit dismissed. Then on Jan. 18, Zemans asked to drop the portion of the suit against Lincolnwood, while keeping the portion against PSI.
In a written ruling filed Wednesday, Judge Charles Kocoras granted Lincolnwood’s and Zemans’ requests to dismiss the count against the village without prejudice. He agreed to dismiss one count against PSI, but denied PSI’s motion to dismiss six other counts filed against them in the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, after Weller stood up to the mistreatment and, in a separate incident, reported a supervisor’s drug abuse, other men he worked with and male superiors responded by retaliating against him by harassing and eventually Weller was fired.
After reviewing the complaint “with due deference – and the lascivious, hostile nature of the firehouse portrayed therein – we find that Weller has sufficiently pled his gender discrimination causes of action,” Kocoras wrote.
Kocoras denied one count against PSI, that of intentional infliction of emotional distress, without prejudice, he wrote. The alleged harassment was “carried out for the exclusive purpose of gratifying the individual perpetrators in a manner readily distinguishable from any sort of business aim.”
In his complaint, Weller says he was employed by PSI starting in October 2010, and the company placed him in Lincolnwood in December 2015, where he worked until he was fired the following July. The north suburb is one of the few municipalities in Illinois to outsource firefighter staffing, according to village officials. Lincolnwood officials said outsourcing saves the village money on pensions and benefits for the workers.
Weller witnessed male coworkers calling his female coworker explicit vulgarities, describe her as “useless,” talk to her “brazenly” about her breasts, tell her “she should not try to seduce anyone at work,” and ask if she was sleeping with her coworkers, according to the complaint.
Weller said in his lawsuit that male co-workers called him the woman’s guard dog, spread rumors that he and the woman were having an affair, asked Weller if he had impregnated her, asked for videos of the two having sex and texted him pornographic images asking if “the images depicted the type of sexual activity” Weller and the woman engaged in.
